Like most major cities, Montreal needs easy highway access from its suburbs and surrounding areas. However, because Montreal was built on an island surrounded by three rivers, it can be entered by land only on a bridge. Although the city was founded in 1642, it was not before 1847 that the first fixed link to the outside was established when a wooden bridge was built across Rivière des Prairies to Île Jésus, on the site of what is now Ahuntsic Bridge. Another bridge was built immediately afterward, a few kilometers west, which became Lachapelle Bridge, and another in 1849, Pont des Saints-Anges, to the east.